Who Sells More Books – Indie Authors Or Traditional Publishers?

Ok, so this isn’t really such a no-brainer post because the answer is probably not going to shock you.

As you probably would have guessed. MOST of the time, RIGHT NOW, traditionally published books will sell more books overall than indie authors can.

Sure there are exceptions. We have all heard the successful independent authors that are selling hundreds of thousands of books, but for the average author (like me) traditional publishing WILL MOST PROBABLY sell more books than you can do yourself. At least in the present. The future? Who knows.

I’ve embraced the indie movement because I love the whole idea of author’s being in control – but I’m not a true indie author. I’m a hybrid author. I have two traditionally published books through Wrightbooks (John Wiley imprint) and two self published books.

My traditionally published books (well mainly just “Shopping for Shares” since “$0 to Rich” is from 2008 and hard to find these days and not yet in ebook format *publishers if you are reading this – please please make $0 to Rich an ebook – we are missing out on sooo many sales*) sell around 30-40 copies per week.

My self published books sell 20-30 per week. So about 30% less.

BUT (and you knew this was coming didn’t you) …

I MAKE MUCH MUCH MORE SELLING LESS BOOKS THAN I DO WITH MY TRADITIONALLY PUBLISHED BOOKS.

Sure I’m still not earning big money .. (yet). But it’s ongoing and it will build as more and more people find me and more and more people adopt e-readers.

The potential for continued earnings is huge.

I’m not naive enough to think this will be the case forever. The publishing industry is evolving very quickly today and I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, next year, ten years from now.

But having that control means that as the industry changes, you can also change with it.

I like having that control.

I’m not for or against traditional publishing. I probably still would take a deal with a publisher again if the deal was good (and I foresee lots of changes in publishing contracts in the future – hopefully favoring the author) but the deal would have to be good. Very good.

But for now, I’m happy to continue to self-publish.

Of course that is contingent on the fact I actually find the time to write – which is getting harder every day as my kids grow. #toomuchtodotoolittletime.